PREFACE. xxi 



by the discoveries made since they flourished, but 

 by the comparison of what they made known with 

 that which was known before them. Neither of these 

 great men can be blamed because servile schools 

 of followers may have risen up, and boldly preached 

 their infallibility; or because with a superstitious 

 intolerance their disciples may have denounced as a 

 species of heresy, the praiseworthy ambition of 

 those who wished to penetrate further than them- 

 selves into the secrets of nature. The nation which 

 has borne the brunt of these absurd charges in 

 natural history is at last triumphant; it can now 

 appeal to facts, and leave the world to judge be- 

 tween its original discoveries on the one hand, and 

 the monotonous chiming on the ideas of Linnaeus, 

 which its adversaries have contented themselves 

 with, on the other. Who indeed, without the im- 

 putation of prejudice, can now assert that the 

 Northern schools have done as much within the last 

 thirty years for natural history, as some of their 

 more southern opponents ? The truth is, that, like 

 the religion of Mahomet, the Linnasan system has 

 given rise in some parts of Europe to an unfortu- 

 nate species of self-content, a barbarous state of 

 semi-civilization, which is so far worse than absolute 

 ignorance, that the existence of it seems to preclude 

 every attempt at further improvement. 



In England, the country where above all others 



